French Harbor, Honduras

We are safe in French Harbor Roatan, Honduras. We made the jump from Coxen’s Hold on Wednesday and made it in to the harbor early to find the holding a little less than good in the anchorage. When we came buy the airport there at Coxen’s Hold, there on the side of the runway was a small plane, Maybe a 20 passenger setting there all wrinkled up with no landing gear. When it happen we don’t know. We heard a lot of sirens over that way the night before. That’s what it’s like when you travel a lot. There is always something to see.
When we read about the trade winds they sounded so good and maybe they are but if you come down here, you will have to deal with them and cold fronts. They can make the wind really blow. I thought they blew at maybe 20mph, always steady and always from the east. “But like all of you know. I have never been much of a thinker.” They’re hard to predict I guess because they may be forecast to blow at 20 and you get gust at 35. Sometimes from maybe south-east to sometimes north-east. They blow the least from 4:00 in the morning to maybe noon and the hardest around 3 in the morning just before they start to drop. Sometime it’s like cutting of a switch. It’s always the worst when you want to sleep. The anchoring thing down here is a little harder than I guessed it would be. We drug in Mexico and had to chase the Pamela Ann down. That’s not much fun trying to catch your boat leaving without you in a dink with a 2 hp motor and the wind blowing 60. We weren’t the only people chasing their boats. There were 3 boats dragging at one time. Even with other people having the same problem don’t make you sleep any better when the wind pick sometimes to 50 at 3 in the morning. So you can see why I said “maybe” the trade winds are a good thing. Along here at the top of Honduras, if you go somewhere, there and back you will have to deal with the trade winds. No mater how much you like to sail. One way you motor.
French Harbor has been set up for rich tourist and you can buy about anything you want here. With me it’s “Steak.” We are eating steak and it’s so good. It’s been 2 years since we had all the steak we could eat. Beef in Central America is grown for dog food and I am not kidding. Almost no one eats beef down here but they ship it in here from the states for the tourist and we are loving it. The diving and snorkeling here is great. Maybe as good as its gets and they speak English so the tourist are here. Coxen’s Hold has a lot of cruise ships but the town its self has very few tourist. They bus people to the places set up for tourist. Like West End and here at French Harbor. There is a large cruiser community here. The cruisers have a lot going on here all the time. If you like being with other cruisers. You will love being here. We have been to some event or another everyday since we got here and there is a lot we have not done Like they rafted up a lot of dinkies and drifted down wind to a restaurant. While they drifted all tied to each other like a little island they past around a bottle of rum.

Dink drag

They have a lot of potluck suppers here and they are good. People going everywhere and people that have been everywhere. From everywhere to going all over the world. Sometimes Pam and I may think we have done a few things in our life till we get in a place like this. This will put us in our place. We have not done much. The island it’s self is great like they are monkeys here. Animal here I have never seen before and beautiful plants and flowers. There is a lot of money here and there is a lots of people that live like a lot of Central Americans live. In small communities with only what they need.

House inside the bay

??????

We are going to stay here for at least a month and sleep well because we rented a dock We may go broke here but it won’t the dock rent here. It is high here. It’s the grocery stores and us buying things we have been doing with out. The food here is good. When you meet people here they say “Welcome to Paradise. Maybe this is it. There is a lot to do here and a lot to see. This is a nice place. This week we plan to start back posting pictures mid-week and we are going to go monkey hunting. Okay maybe it not hunting if you use a camera. We will post this week what we find now that we have internet again. Having the boat where we can leave her for a little while and I need to say. When the trade wind blow its cooler so now, let the trade winds blow.
Have we found Paradise? We will let you know.

Pretty flowers

Coxen’s Hole,Roatan

First let me say we are sorry we haven’t been able to get on the internet like we want to. When we started the blog we wanted to share what we were seeing. Put in lots of pictures. Tell stories of what is happening with us. We are writing this on Sunday morning. It’s raining and a little cooler about 82 in the boat at 9:00. We are in Coxen’s Hold, Roatan Honduras. Anchored in the middle of the hole. There is a run way beside the anchorage that has been extended in to the side of the hole so we have planes all day. Landing and taking off. We set in the cockpit and watch. That fun “for now.” We are glad we are out of Utila. Bad anchorage. Hard to anchor with sand over coral. There is a “few” bar that play music as load as they can some times till 4 in the morning. This is like being anchored in a rock concert with them playing songs like Black Man Revenge with awful music and Obama making speeches. At this time in my life I don’t want to hear bad music or any ones’ making speeches. Here this morning it was so quit that you could not here a sound inside the boat at day light. I lay there listening to the rain and our cat Rusty snore. We are anchored in mud over sand and this is very good holding. So we feel safe here. This is Easter Sunday. If people were watching the sun come up they were quit. We like it here. There is a good grocery store here. A market a lot of local people shop at called a Mercado in Central America. They are like a flea market with about any thing locals have to sell down here. This to is a social place where people gather and a lot of the time you can find a place to set down and just watch how people live. Buy stuff and watch how they treat each other. This is where you can sometimes buy things like baby pigs or flowers. I didn’t see any when I was there the last time. Pigs that is. This is and island and they may not grow out pigs here but we have not been any where they don’t have live chickens in there yards. No where in Central America.

When we left Utilla we saw a water spout come down as we were leaving. This too we feel we need to put in our blog as I have been saying. “It’s real out here.” Not always like a dream. Pam and I have been doing this a long time but that don’t make us good sailors. Just old sailors but I didn’t know. “What to do” So we just tried to stay away from it. Remember this is open ocean. Who do you call if you get hit? What radio? VHF, side ban, Ham? What channel? The truth is you just call and hope you can get some one. One night in Utila a cold front was coming in. A drunk young man swam to a boat anchored in the anchorage and tried to get in with people on board and they called the port captain and he said he was busy. The cold front was just getting there and it was a little stormy. We didn’t know how stormy it was going to get. Pam didn’t want me to leave her there by herself and take Dumpling out in the storm. Maybe it was going to get real bad. It didn’t. I didn’t go but some other sailors anchored next to them went to there rescue and took the drunk to shore. It was all happening fast. The storm didn’t get any stronger We were anchored on the other side of the anchorage and I wish I had went but “what if?”  Like I have been saying. It can get real out here and can do it very fast. A lot of our life now is like a rabbit running from one safe hold to another. It takes good planning to stay safe out here. Mother nature can be a “I will use the word tough ” sometimes. We love this life but a lot of people only hear what they want to and we want to keep this blog real. This is a good life but some times it can get hard. One of the things that make this cruising life so good is what you may find when you are cruising. Here in Coxen’s Hold they have a Bojangles and it is real in every way. If you are inside you can not find any thing that is any different than one in New Orleans right down to the people that run it. A lot of the people here are black and speak English. The menu is written in English. “We been eating chicken Y’all” and it’s good. Tomorrow, We are going in and see if we can find an internet. Every thing like that has been closed for Easter. If you are reading this. We found one. Tonight we have some fresh pork to cook from the Mercado and Pam has fill the shower tank with rain water from our valve we have in our decks. She has already told me she wants me to bale Dumpling and save the rain water to wash clothes in. “ Life is good.” One day this week we will go on to French Harbor and we have been told it the best place here so we will let you know. I hope they have round tomato. Utilla had the best round tomatoes anywhere we have been down here. You never know what the next place will be like or what you may find. Maybe that is the best part of this life.

Guess What?

Kids climbing on anchor line and then jumping from ship

Cooking meat skins at the mercaro

Street in Coxen’s Hole

Meat market where we got good pork

 

Honduras

Blog99 We are still in Utila Honduras. We are slowly forgetting the pain of getting here. It was as hard a trip as we have ever made. Never again will we try to make good against the trade winds when they’re up. Strong wind and big seas are for the strong and the brave. I lost all of that long before I got old. It’s great being in another country. It’s a little different in every country. For one thing this island, the main economy is tourism and the main tourist here are here for the diving. Maybe half are more are young people. Most places the tourist are almost always retires and older. Almost all the water here is clear as it is in all of the Western Caribbean. You can see amazing fish under our boat. See your anchor. See if the water is deep or not. Now I like young people but they stay up longer than we do. I don’t like young peoples music and I really don’t like young peoples music at 4 in the morning. They party here harder than any where we have ever been. We had a young p

erson the swim out to a anchored boat and try to get in. They called the law. There is not much of a law down here. Some other boaters went to their rescue and they got the guy in their dink and took him ashore. He was so drunk he could not talk. The law came the next day about 10 and took a report. That’s the first time they were there. Being here with all these tourist they do have some things in the stores that are hard to get down here like grits. The beef is still not worth eating They grow turnips green here on the island and you can get them fresh. Everything is higher than in the states in the stores. Most of the Caribbean is that way. People that say you can live cheaper in Central America don’t eat like we do in the states. Local people eat rice with beans and live in very small places. Having a motor bike puts you in the middle class .but down here a motor bike cost more than the states. You have more personal freedom down here. The law is not watching you here like the states but if you need one don’t call at night or when they are having a meal or a nap. We are hopping to go on next week. I hope we will be happier in the Roatan. Maybe we can find someplace we can anchor out of the trade winds. We are still battling the C4 thing where you can’t stay longer than 90 days in the C4 countries. Honduras is one of the countries and we just left Guatemala. A C4 country. They only gave us 30 days to stay here. Not enough time to see much and I tried to tell the woman how hard it was to get here. We have never had to deal with the trade winds before. Its makes every thing harder. Going ashore you get wet. It’s harder to sleep when the boat is jumping around and the wind is whistling. It’s harder to leave the boat when the wind is blowing hard. We worry about the anchor dragging. Boats come and go here. There is no long term boats anchored here.

Banana Tree

There are chickens here everywhere and we like that.

Island Chickens

Iguanas run around here everywhere too. There are banana trees growing in most yards. The people are as nice as we have seen down here. Most speak English. I hope they will gives us more time and we are soon in the Roatan. We miss hearing howler monkeys. I don’t know if there is monkey in the Roatan. We will see. We want miss the roar of these young people partying are the wind blowing hard all the time. If we have to go back to Belize or if we can go on. It will be fine. The adventure goes on.

Most streets off the main road look like this

Utila

We are finally out of Guatemala. We are in Utila, Honduras It was a real adventure getting here. When we left I had the fuel lines crossed on the motors. When the motors were running the fuel return lines went to the right tank but the lines to the fuel pump would take fuel out of the wrong tank. This meant when we ran one motor one tank would fill up the other would go down. We were checked out of Guatemala. We believed we needed fuel. We went back to the shipping port of Puerto Barrios, Guatemala even though we were officially checked out Guatemala. We gerry jugged fuel back to the boat and filled up the low tank. That is when we found the other tank full and going up the vent. Now we had more fuel than we normally carry. We went back to the little spot we sometimes anchor when we are out of the river. Our Claro stick would work there so we could get on line and get the weather. They would say the weather was fine where we were but too windy at Utila. We have always been Chicken sailors so we went to the shipping port of Puerto Cortes and anchored for the first night in Honduras. Easy day run and sailed most of the way. This meant by law we need to check in there. We were told that we had a better chance to get more time on our check in visas in Utila. We went on the next morning. With the port captain calling us on the VHF radio saying “What are your intentions?” He had seen us come in. We were leaving. He ask if our papers were in order and Pam said “Yes we have a Zarpe for Utila.” and he said we could go on. This is not a good way to get your day stared talking to the port captain knowing that we need to check in. We made a day sail on to a little cove in Honduras called Escondido again we were not checked in. A lot of people want go there because and old couple was murdered there and robbed some years ago on there boat. Its very remote with no sign of people ever being there. Parrots flying around and howler monkeys sounding off in the jungle.

Escondido looking out of cove

When we left to go there it was nice but before we got there the wind was right on the nose and blowing. We made it in there and anchored with the wind howling and a swell coming in the cove. We sat there sat there for a couple of days listening to the side band radio to try to get the weather. The wind would die around day light and be blowing again around 1:00. “Hard” Most of the people talking on the morning net. were in Belize. We decided to try to go on. We left before day light to make a simple 44 mile run with no wind. We motored on. By 10:00 it was blowing and we went on. Remember Utila is an island. Out in the ocean. By noon we had ocean swells and the wind increasing. Our little schooner was having a hard time making way. The last 5 miles took us 3 hours and we had to go in the after dark. It’s easy to get in but if you make a mistake there is a reef on both side of the entrance. Now remember it took us 3 hours to make the last 5 miles and now the wind was still blowing and we had to find a place to anchor in the bay in the dark and with all that wind. First try the anchor with 200 feet of line and 50 feet of chain. drug in 15 feet of water so now we had to get all that back on the boat in all that wind. It was late before we got anchored and the Honduras Navy boat came out to see if we had our anchor set. They were nice. Ruff night trying to sleep This time we had out two anchored with lots of line. Day light came with no wind at all, and we could see we were in a good spot. The bay is big enough with low buildings so the trade winds are not blocked. Its hot here with out the trade wind blowing and bumpy here with them. We were only given 30 days in Honduras so we will see how this goes. Maybe we can get an extension. We will see. The people here are nice and most of the people that are born here can speak English. This is maybe the cheapest place on earth to get your diving certification so more than half of people here are young. Just here to get certified and ready to party. We will move on to a more protected place and hopefully quieter place soon.

Even with all the people from places all around the world its still a Central American country. Early Saturday morning here a man had a half of a pig and he cooked it. Cutting it up with a machete in little pieces on the street. Cooked it to sell in a restaurant.

There is no butchers in Central America. They cut every piece of meat up just in small pieces and cook it.

We are glad to be here and haven’t seen much yet but we know there is adventure here and it will probably find us soon. We want even look some times and it will find us. We will let you know.